Why Do Founders Love René Girard? - Johnathan Bi - #479

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
What's happening, people? welcome back to the show. My guest today is Johnathan Bi. He's a startup founder, philosopher and a mathematician. René Girard is one of the most popular philosophers in Silicon Valley. Why is it that an obscure French polymath from the 1900s would become one of the most influential and cited thinkers amongst founders, CEOs and leaders in high growth companies? Thankfully, Johnathan has dedicated the last half decade to studying his work. Expect to learn how Girard believes that mimetic desire drives almost all of our behaviour, why breaking out from the group to do your own thing doesn't mean that you're an individual, how having sex can end up being not for the enjoyment of sex, why Peter Thiel and so many others love Girard's work, how understanding Girard can improve your daily life and much more. It's an interesting thing to consider how one man can be so influential and whether his theory about mimesis and about mimetic desire actually explains about why he's so popular in the first place. Don't forget, if you are listening, there is a free copy of the Modern Wisdom reading list waiting for you on the other side of the internet. All that you have to do is go to chriswillex.com. It's 100 books that you should read before you die, the most interesting and impactful books that I've ever found. And it'll subscribe you to my Three Minute Monday newsletter as well. Go to chriswillex.com/books to download your copy for free right now. That's chriswillex.com/books. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Johnathan Bi.
Johnathan Bi, welcome to the show.

**Jonathan Bi** (1:58)
Thanks for having me, Chris, excited to be on.

**Chris Williamson** (2:00)
So the first time that we met was through David Perel, actually, and we went out for dinner. Now, David is a man who has two modes of culinary experience, and he either goes chick-fil-a or fighting hobos outside of a food truck, or he goes the most expensive steak restaurant in town. I've noticed this since spending time with him, that he's very sort of barbelly when it comes to what he wants to do with food. But thankfully, we went to the nice steak restaurant.

**Jonathan Bi** (2:32)
Yeah, although I wouldn't mind fighting for a taco next time with you when I'm in Austin.

**Chris Williamson** (2:38)
David's oddly experienced at that, which is... Right.

**Jonathan Bi** (2:42)
Incredible, given how small and scrawny he is.

**Chris Williamson** (2:46)
He's got a new girlfriend that's training him up or something, making him eat a surplus of calories. He once took me for lunch at some French place on Congress, and I was in flip-flops and a pair of shorts, and it was just wags and little tiny model dogs. But anyway, enough about David Perel. Are you trained in René Girard, the philosopher? Have you got some sort of Girardian accreditation?

**Jonathan Bi** (3:14)
Perhaps I have the most Girardian of accreditations, which is being self-taught. Girard himself was trained in history in Indiana University, and before that he was an archivist in France. But he neither made any contributions to being a librarian or history. And the avenues that he did make significant contributions to in anthropology and theology and psychology, he was all self-taught. So I suppose that's a nice way of saying no.

**Chris Williamson** (3:44)
But followed in his footsteps, did it the right way.

**Jonathan Bi** (3:47)
Yes. I was trained in continental philosophy. And however, Girard is not read at all in the academy, unless in literary criticism. And so I was sort of introduced to Girard as a sophomore, and I had to read the Girardian canon, so to speak, myself with a couple of friends, of course. That's what always makes the journey fun.

**Chris Williamson** (4:10)
Who is he and what's the core insight of his work?

**Jonathan Bi** (4:14)
Yeah, so he recently passed away in 2015, but his life is probably not as interesting as his key insights are. And I would say that his most fundamental insight is, we don't often desire things for the things themselves, but for what the things say about us. And the way he makes this argument is to delineate two types of desire, physical desire, which is directed at the object, and metaphysical desire, which is directed at what the object says about me. Let me give you some quick examples. Take any activity, really, and we can see both strands of desire at work in different circumstances. If I desire to have sex, for example, it could be for pleasure, it could be for intimacy, experiences in the moment, and that would be for physical desire, a desire for experience. But I can also desire to have sex for what having sex with a certain type of person says about me. This is how, as you would know from being in nightlife, how a lot of people do live their lives. They're not really in it for the pleasure. They're in it because they want to be someone, and that's the psychology of the Casanova or the Don Juan or the Coquette.